


Three months, tops.

by umechaw



Series: Until the Dust Settles, in the Same Specific Place [1]
Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Family, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:06:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23322163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/umechaw/pseuds/umechaw
Summary: He figures he's got the end of the world downpat by now. It's the moments after that he can't quite get his head around.
Relationships: Tifa Lockhart/Cloud Strife
Series: Until the Dust Settles, in the Same Specific Place [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1839856
Comments: 83
Kudos: 475





	Three months, tops.

**Author's Note:**

> Old work from FF, renamed and rewritten.  
> TW: panic attacks

Barret pops the cap of a cold beer with his thumb and hands it to him. His palm goes damp from the condensation and Cloud gives a nod in thanks as he downs the first mouthful.

'You nervous or something?' He's eyeing Cloud like a hawk.

'What.'

'You're shaking,' Barret says, referencing the leg he has propped on the rail pipe under the bar, heel bouncing.

He stops immediately. He looks at Tifa without meaning to.

Barret notices, gives a long-winded _"ah"_ that's a mite too condescending and puts a broad arm around his back, and an embrace from Barret is like hugging a car, all bulk.

Cloud fondly remembers a time when the thought of sitting in his personal space and being so intrusive would have disgusted Barret. And here he was, leaning close and smug, even with good intent. He wasn't trying on _purpose_ to be an asshole, that was the difference.

'If you're waiting for the opportune moment then I'm sorry to say it's passing you by.'

'I'm sitting here, enjoying a drink.'

'My bad, thought you were just being a big pussy.'

Cloud shrugs Barret's arm away. 'Thanks for the pep talk. Real helpful.'

‘Look, nobody's gonna tell your stubborn ass what to do, but hear me out. This is something you don't really sit on the sidelines for, yeah?'

'That's not what I'm doing.'

'You are. You know you are, buddy boy.'

As much as he hates to admit it, Barret might be onto something. He doesn’t mean to isolate himself. The time between the second end of the world and the moment in which he sits at this bar alone is insurmountable. Well. In reality it's only been forty-eight hours, but for about forty-six he's been in a stupor, trying to figure out what one does when their life is handed back to them.

He hasn't spoken to Tifa yet. He doesn’t want to burst this bubble. She is the centre of attention, anyway. Denzel has never seen her in action before now, so he is suddenly obsessed to measure her strength. 'Pick me up! Now pick me and Marlene up! Now Yuffie! Now Mister Valentine!'

'Er... sorry, Vincent.'

'I am sufficiently drunk enough for this,' he assures her, as she heaves him up by his middle and his feet clear the floor well and truly. They all cheer.

'Marlene says you broke a church seat with _just_ your fist!' Denzel says, stars in his eyes. 'Show me?'

Her laugh is helpless, breathless. Denzel has been bedridden for a long time now, and he is an entirely different boy before them. Animated. Cloud can see her, tired to her bones, but her heart is filling up too much to care. She's got the telltale sign of tipsy written over her cheeks and nose. She's so, completely, happy.

'Yeah, Teef, show us how strong you are! See how far you can throw old Cid down the street, I'll give you some _secret-stash_ materia if you hit fifty feet.'

'Brat, I'll throw you down the street for _free.’_

'You ever consider that maybe you just _overthink_ shit too much?' Barret says, bringing him back to the unpleasant inquisition.

Cloud takes a long pull from the beer instead of giving the obvious answer to an obvious question. It hurt his throat almost. Crisp and bitter. And then warm.

'You think I don't know that?' Cloud says, meeting Barret's eyes again.

'You're a pain in my ass, that's what I think. Have been ever since I met you. But I still want you around. And, listen... I just wanted you to know that I really appreciate everything you and Tifa have done for Marlene-'

'Tifa. All Tifa.'

'Hey, delivery boy. Maybe you wanted to quit on life, but you still kept riding around so you could help put food on the table for my kid. So I'm _thanking_ you for that.'

He wants to argue further, but you didn't really argue with Barret when he was four beers in. Or ever.

So he nods.

'Trust you to doubt yourself after saving the world. _Twice._ I see you sitting here, alone, cogs turning in that head of yours, and I'm tryna tell you that it doesn't have to be so complicated. These are the good times.' Barret holds his arm out wide again, and this time it’s an invitation. 'Enjoy them. Otherwise what were we even fighting for?'

For all he’s feeling contrite, he finds himself put on the spot by that question. This _is_ what he had fought for, isn’t it? To see these kids smiling. To finally have some semblance of peace in this world, to hear it breathe. To be with Tifa, and his friends, without the end of the world at their heels. So he accepts.

He's shy at first, testing the outskirts, finding a chair at a table close to Tifa and the kids, she’s got them both bouncing on her knees. Eyes keep meeting over the cacophony, because Yuffie is suddenly in charge of the jukebox and Cid is getting drunker and Barret louder. There’s something unsaid, bashful, like they’re teenagers. He wishes it wasn’t so difficult. But then, she can’t help but smile and he can’t help but return it like it’s instinctual, and in those moments it all feels okay.

Eventually he's drunk enough to be tapping his foot along to the jukebox, a soothing song with a lilting violin, and he forgets to be embarrassed when Marlene asks him to dance. He remembers the shy little kid he first met all those years ago. She couldn’t even look at him. But here she is, eyes locking on his and a hand held out, not taking no for an answer.

He swoops her up and she giggles in delight, almost too big to hold, but he takes her hand and dips and twirls her around and feels everybody watching. He finds he doesn't mind.

He even keeps his composure when Marlene begs Tifa to join in, and they squish the girl between them and do their best to hold onto one another. When Denzel squirms in and clings to their legs they can do nothing but slowly shuffle in an awkward circle. They look at each other, just past Marlene's head, he sees her smile so big, and he can't remember ever seeing her so happy.

His heart just about melts.

* * *

He has nightmares. It's a total, utter gorefest of those he loves getting skewered. He has the image of Aerith dying practically burned into his skull, so it isn't hard to substitute. Tifa. His mother. Yuffie, Barret, Vincent, Cid, all of them. But the worst is the kids. It’s ruthless. It was all ripe flesh and open organs and feathers that stick to the blood.

Sephiroth is there, making him relive the moment of being stuck to the end of _Masamune,_ somewhere close to his heart. Ripped right through. Cloud feels like he’s still in his head somehow, trying to claw his way through him like he did the lifestream.

He always opens his eyes to the world crashing down on him.

And as it does, she does too.

She's a night owl, has been ever since she was a kid. He still struggles to hold onto childhood sometimes, but he remembers when he looks at _her._ Words, and eyes, wistful on the stars.

He goes down the stairs to be somewhere other than his own head.

And there she is, sitting on the bar and squinting into a manifest, probably weighing the cost of all the alcohol they'd just drained out of her. Legs crossed and a sleeve falling down her arm and her hair up high, an image that strikes him as so solid and peaceful it makes his throat hurt. She keeps only a low light on, a flickering candle, subconsciously leaning into it to see better. As much as this was her time, she did not wish to disturb how the night was supposed to work.

When she sees him on the stairs, she knows instantly. She knows that he needs air, there must be something claustrophobic in his eyes, which always glow too brightly at night. 7th Heaven feels dense. So they went out onto the street to sit together on the front step. She brings the candle with them, it smells like chocolate and spice, but the streets smell industrial, and it bites back against that sweetness. It's three in the morning and bikes and cars still roll by, the occasional group of twos and threes, and they feel hidden by the sound of it all.

He doesn't have it in himself to paint the picture of his violent, hyper-realistic dreams for her, but he tries to explain that in the nights since he's come home he lies there with his fingers dipped into the mattress, marveling at it, terrified by it. An inhalation of deep breath and dust. An eyeful of a ceiling, with crags and splinters he'd once learnt. The house feels like a living, breathing organism while their friends are still there. So many bodies in various corners of the house, dead, drunk weight. The kids, just down the hall.

He thinks that this is all much too delicate.

It is an inherently selfish thought, but the last time he believed everything was going to be okay he had gotten the stigma. The last time he believed Sephiroth was dead, life had willed him back into being. He's been reliant on a hard church floor, conversations through banked messages, human interaction narrowed down to the collection and delivery of a package either side of long stretches of endless road.

He's been reliant on his inevitable death.

But he emerged from that pool of Aerith's rain, alive after death. The world had seemed so much brighter to him. Lighter. If only for a moment. It was a lot to hold onto.

'Barret told me to stop thinking so much. To "enjoy the good times".'

'Mm, wise words. Very profound.'

'He's a smug asshole.'

She nudges him gently, smiling at that.

A smug asshole, but a right one.

He relents again, and digs the heels of his palms into his eyes to ease the ache there. 'Don't know why I can't get my head around it.'

'It's okay. I sometimes think that the calm after the storm is the hardest thing about it,' she says softly, mirroring his thoughts.

Cloud doesn't have to nod.

And he wants to think that they have the future at their fingertips, but they’ve never been very good at this. He wants to tell her why he left because it’s the least of what she deserves. He wants to talk about moving back in, if that’s even what was best. But it gets stuck in his throat.

He wishes for a peek inside her mind, to find the reason why there is anything other than disappointment in the eyes she puts on him. He keeps thinking about the day he left. She’s hard as stone, and their relationship is like a crashing tide. Sometimes he feels like he wore her down the way he does everything else. But she still sat before him a wonder of shape and angle despite it all. A full spectrum of color in a world he often saw in stark black and white.

‘I’m sorry.’ she says suddenly.

He's still on the verge of his own apologies and it startles him to see how earnest she is in hers.

'That's, uh, my line.'

'You know, when the kids were taken I put so much pressure on you when you were…'

_Dying. Letting yourself die. Choosing the dead._

Cloud rubs the back of his neck, still feeling the sting and the fire of that lecture. He doesn’t blame her. It had all but smacked some sense into him.

‘It's okay.'

‘I was cruel to you.’

‘Tifa. You were worried for the kids.’

She lifts his face up and to the side with two delicate fingers so he can't keep staring at the space between his heels, where a spot of tar sticks to the pavement.

'I don't expect you to be fine straight away. Nobody does. I just… I want you to know that.'

He mulls over that, doesn't quite agree. His knee bounces, a shot of nervousness and the queasiness left by alcohol in the pit of his stomach.

'I've made a lot of mistakes.'

'Cloud, you can only do what you think is right.'

'You think that's any excuse for choosing to run away and die?'

She smiles, and it's unexpected. 'You always seem to forget the part where you come back, just in the nick of time.'

She is too kind, kinder than he deserves. She tries to understand people, maybe a little too much. He can’t help but question what it was he did to deserve such people in his life, to have known them, those who searched and fought with blood, sweat and tears for the good. He sees her trying to understand his reason for leaving to die alone. For the life of him, he can't understand how she doesn't doubt that he'll up and leave as soon as everything goes to shit again, because he wasn't sure of that himself.

'We're all just trying to survive, right? Live our lives the best we can.’

And then Tifa shuffles closer, so much so he has to open an arm to her. He's all hesitation at first, but Tifa is a comfort, and familiar. For the first time in a long time, he holds his friend close.

'Proud of you.' she says.

He holds onto the moment. Tries to commit it to memory so that he has something to look back on. It is neon light catching an exposed shoulder, and the baby hairs she keeps trying to tuck behind an ear. It's the way she looks at him, and he sees their history in her. It's that elusive electric charge that's been missing with his absence.

It's the unknown of the future, that doesn't seem so dark with her around. Remembering how she makes him feel. Like he's on his toes and grounded in the planet all at once.

'Don't put so much pressure on yourself, okay? Pretending that everything is going to be alright doesn't work for everybody, not for you and me.'

'I don't know if I can ever be what people need me to be.'

'Cloud. You're enough.'

She says it a few more times, hoping it hits home.

* * *

He’s always the first one awake in the house. Maybe it’s his training, or something in his DNA. His mother was always an early riser, seemed to have a bodyclock that made her wake up moments before the sun so she could sweep the curtains apart, welcome it into her home.

He had liked that about the church, he thinks, as he pulls to a stop and Tifa climbs off the bike behind him before the engine dies. The early sunlight streams through the great holes in the ceiling, hitting his eyelids. And every morning he woke to the smell of flowers and their purity. And for a second there was something other than the pain from the stigma as her kind, transcendental touch washed over him. Stained glass windows, archaic kings and queens and the glow of the slums. Tonight it's moon and stars. Aerith’s flowers glow, like she knows. Of course she knows. _Why, hello there._

They don't say much as they first walk in together. There had been so many people in here last time, so much light and noise. It’s so starkly different.

Tifa sighs beside him, and makes her move. She seems a little lost at first, before she picks up the first shattered piece of a church pew, and then a floorboard. It barely makes a dent in the mess but she does it anyway and starts a neat little pile to keep herself busy while he collects his things.

He's always been an early riser, but for some reason the night works for both of them. It hasn't been easy. The days are different, filled with the energy of nine people crammed into one home and everyone takes their time leaving 7th Heaven. It’s a haven that past and present can’t touch. He doesn’t want to ruin the calm between him and Tifa and slowly the last year between them unfolds. They've both seen the world on the brink. But for some reason a calamity falling from the sky didn't seem so… unbearable as the quiet, slow death of Geostigma.

He meets her at the edge of the pool, bags packed. She's twisting her hands together, nervous.

'I knew you were trying to find a cure for Denzel.’

He is silent at first, and he feels her eyes on him, worried, and doesn’t push him to talk. He shrugs and remembers the useless medical texts, the long nights spent pouring over them, every question on the road that led to nothing.

'I never stopped looking.’ he tells her.

'Why didn't you tell me you had it too?' Tifa immediately shakes her head, hands raised before he can even feel his stomach drop. He lets the regret, and every other confusing emotion that came with the decision to leave wash over him. 'No. You don't have to explain. I just… I hate picturing you all alone.'

‘Not completely.’ When she looks at him for clarification the corner of his mouth turns up. ‘I got a lot of voicemails.’

‘So you actually listened to them, huh?’

He nods. He had listened to all of them, every day, catching updates on Denzel's condition and how Marlene was doing, trying to decipher what he could of her well being through whatever brave tone she was putting on. It was easy to know just from her voice alone whether she was sleeping properly. The rest of them, too, popped up every week or so, and he realises now it was probably the only thing that kept him grounded. Kept him working. Kept him eating.

‘Did it help? Living here?’

‘It was peaceful.’

She closes her eyes, breathes deeply. ‘I feel her here.’

Cloud nods. ‘But, I always feel her.’

Tifa smiles and looks up through a hole in the great cathedral roof and into the night sky. ‘It’s fitting that it was her.’

‘Yeah.’

‘She’s still looking out for us. She was always the best of us.’

‘Yeah.’ he says, quieter this time, thinking about the ribbon on his arm. She _was_ the best of them. Kind and gentle and fierce. She had shone so bright, opened him wide up. She had meant so much.

‘I really miss her.’ He hears something break in her voice, feels a pang of guilt and sorrow for their dead friend. It threatens to overwhelm him, especially when he sees a tear fall down her cheek. But then she’s holding his hand, squeezing tight. They don't let go for a long time.

* * *

Tifa whispers to him one night, sitting next to each other on the bar and speaking beneath the sound of Yuffie's grating snores from upstairs. She sounds almost ashamed. 'Barret told me that he might try and make it work, take Marlene with him. I don't know if I can handle that.'

It strikes him not for the first time that this love she has for a child that isn't hers makes her beautiful.

The days creep by, like they were slower, trying to catch up with the rest of the world. The bar stays closed for at least two weeks and it is full of many more nights like the first, and home-cooked meals, and fights, and laughter.

But eventually they must part ways. The group splinters off one by one and the bubble bursts. By the time Yuffie's done squatting in the living room, he's even desperate for some peace and quiet.

Barret is the last to leave, and he makes his offer to his daughter. Marlene surprises all of them when she asks to stay. She has to keep an eye on Denzel and Cloud, after all. Denzel doesn't cry, but he's got a face like he's about to.

Barret doesn't cry either, even though his heart might be breaking, but he has places he needs to be, just like her. She's his tough, smart, perfect girl. He has a world to change, so he says goodbye with hugs that seem to last a lifetime.

Tifa cries. Much later after the kids have gone to bed. Relief, but sadness to see a father walk away from his child again, if only for a little longer. She's embarrassed to show it in front of him, and he's a little lost, because Tifa is usually the strong one. And this… this hits a little too close to home for her, he can tell. She seems to hate her tears almost as much as he hates his own. He tells her it's okay. He tells her he's glad Marlene is staying, just so she doesn't feel so bad, and he holds out tissues for her. 

But Tifa doesn't stay down for long, and she never did.

She starts thinking about reopening the bar again, because this fanciful little world they’ve made for themselves doesn’t transcend finances or her livelihood. But it’s good for her. As soon as she opens the doors again there's a bustle about her, a spark.

He’s come to rely on their peaceful midnight conversations. Going to sleep is always easier when he knows she'll be up, waiting, candles and messy hair and soft smiles if he needs it. But he doesn't share this sentiment with her. He watches the warmth of nightlife come back to 7th Heaven as the patrons start trickling back. On the cold nights the windows fog up so much from all the bodies and hot breath. Sitting at the bar and watching her work and talking quietly to her in a spare moment isn’t quite the same, but it’s still a comfort.

But sometimes… sometimes he got a feeling, like a gnawing in his gut. That comfort shouldn’t be his. He’s a leech. He’s aimless. She's trying to move on, not letting herself dwell. Even the kids, even Denzel is doing a better job than he is at pretending that there's a sense of normalcy again. There's a relief in the boy's face, more colour than Cloud ever remembers seeing, healthy and freckled and curly.

_You don't have to pretend everything is alright._

But he does, because Tifa has night-owl eyes. Sees everything. And she has better things to worry about than a grown man battling with a few bad dreams and crippling pessimism.

Everyone is trying, so he tries too. He reopens his own business, old clients catch on quick and he's out on the road again. And that helps. An old habit. He makes sure they're close to home at first, tries not to venture any further than Kalm. One, two, three days go by, and then a week, and then two, but the world doesn't implode. The sky doesn't turn black and a singing sword doesn't rip through his roof and stick him to his bed.

There are small things that are different this time. There is more to that long stretch of endless road. When she calls, he answers. If he misses it, calls back. It’s small, homely things. Pick up this or that for dinner. Bring the kids home from school, she can’t make it. Sometimes it’s a simple reminder to eat and sleep, and he feels guilt for this obligation she has for him.

_She does it because she loves you._

_She probably does it because she's trying to remind you she still exists._

It might be a little bit of both, because he’s not completely daft.

It's shocking at first to see the way she visibly relaxes at the sight of him returning. He sees it in the kids too. They're nervous. He thought he was the only one that felt it - leech. Not really home yet. The subtle chance that there might not be the return trip.

She's making dinner one night, a few hours before opening. His hands are covered in the smell and stickiness of onion, and he's bent over the sink, washing them, and their back and forth is light enough that the kids don't notice as they draw together at one of the tables, and her pan sizzles.

'I'm not charging you rent. We're doing fine, really. The bar's picking up again.'

'It's not about that.' he insists. No, it wasn't. It was about his pride, or something equally stupid. Because Tifa probably _doesn't_ need his money. She's so on top of everything, her business, her home, her finances. Immaculate.

He was the worst adult he knew. Worse than Yuffie. Worse than _Vincent._ He was literal human garbage.

'It hasn't even been a month, we don't have to worry about it right now. Just give yourself time to get back to-'

'I don't need time.' _I need to feel like I'm… actually…_

He doesn't know what. _Helping?_ _Useful?_ To her and her home and this family. And he hasn't felt like that in a long time. The things he does - it’s just common sense. He’s out on the road, earning what he can. He chips in for food and bills, tries to be there to help the kids get ready for bed, helps her cook. But it's not enough.

'Cloud,' she sighs, and his name falls from people's lips like that sometimes. Exasperation personified. 'You do realise that you just saved the world for a second time and-'

'I'm not living here for free.' he says, rather gruff, because he's sick of hearing that. Hearing that he's some big hero.

'If you could call it that.' she says under her breath, and then realises that he heard her. She stiffens up and glances at him and doesn't know what to say.

She knows that he's still living out of a bag, even though it's been weeks now. He hasn't unpacked. Hasn't even made his bed, keeps nothing but a bottle of hard liquor on his desk for his nightcaps. But she doesn't want to pry, or treat him like a child, and she looks like she regrets her comment almost instantly.

'Maybe I shouldn't even be living here-'

The sound of her wooden spoon clattering into the pan cuts him short. He can hear the _scritch_ of the kid's pencils on their drawing books suddenly stop. Stark silence.

Tifa is a genuine person, but shy of her feelings, and she buries them. Silence is a telltale sign of hers, something building inside. What he expects is her anger, which can be almost as explosive as her fists. The kids are thinking the same thing, holding their breath. Because he's just told Tifa, too offhandedly, that he could leave. He could leave them again.

He braces himself. At least his bag is already packed.

And instead she says, after a deep breath, 'You should be my bouncer.'

He snorts in surprise, an amusement he can't help. 'Tifa, you don't need a bouncer.'

'That's sweet. But do you know how quiet business gets after I have to resort to being my own security guard?'

'I don't…'

'Look, weekends are tough. Someone threatens the world again and everyone just thinks it's okay to act like a hooligan. You be my bouncer three nights a week, we'll call it even on the rent. You really don't take up that much room,' she teases.

He glances as the kids. They've gone back to playing. But they're sharing a smile, all conspiratory.

The storm passes.

'Do we have a deal?' she asks.

She holds her hand out. He quickly wipes the suds off his fingers and onto his pants, and shakes it firmly.

'It's a deal.'

* * *

_You're enough. You don't have to pretend everything is okay_.

He is pretending. Cogs turning.

He finally understands what he was asking of her. Some reason to stay, some tangible reason for his company that isn’t just _him_ and his shit.

She needs a bouncer, and he can do that.

He unpacks and makes his bed and dusts every surface. He melds back into his home.

That's what it'll be, he thinks. He just has to give it time.

But the dreams don’t take a step back. They start running.

And Tifa is…

Well.

Sometimes it was like his insides melting, watching her on her feet like a one-woman army.

He tries to do more than just stand around looking threatening, but it is clear that reigning in the chaos was one of her favorite parts of the job. She has a real knack for carrying a haphazardous amount of things at once, serving five people at a time, and she dismisses it when he suggests she hire some help. Laughs and smacks his arm when he says the kids would make great waiters.

Really, he doesn't ever have to do much. Her patrons are good, and thankful to her. Her regulars are kind, usually, older, just want to listen to the music and be somewhere warm, welcoming, a slice of heaven. She has a killer signature cocktail list. When they do touch her, decidedly friendly or not, she's good at shrugging them off. But there was always that one grabby jerk.

But it came with fighting with her, he guesses. Knowing her body. A look from her, the way her fists and her throat tightens a fraction when she starts getting heckled or violated, and he's out of his seat. He's prying the hand off of her. He's only had to use his fists once, on an asshole that kept trying to come back inside. Otherwise it only takes the mako-green eyes for them to realise exactly what they’re fucking with.

It took less than a month, and one instance with a gang (that had been a wild night) where his sword had to come out from behind the bar, and he became recognizable in 7th Heaven again. People start greeting him, when he’s by the door.

He likes the way men stare at her with something like trepidation after any and all of their interactions. _Were they a thing? Is she taken? Are they in love?_

In his mind, maybe they are.

It is an awful thing to pretend. With time, and quiet, came a stewpot of old, old decrepit feelings and some new ones.

It's a mix of the old hopeless infatuation of their childhood, where she'd seemed like a whole other species, bigger and better than he'd ever be. And he’d always had a chip on his shoulder about being on the bottom rung. Didn’t have a father, never made friends easy. And then he was leaving to be in SOLDIER, and she was a girl he wished he'd always been able to stare at the night sky with, making gentle promises.

And then there's everything else that they've been through together. A lot of it is tragedy. A lot of it is very, very confusing.

One thing that is _not_ confusing to him, is that she is Tifa. And right now, she is one of the best things in his life. His head is full of warm static and his stomach feels off, or _just right,_ watching her.

And one night he’s sitting at the bar. It’s busier than usual due to the break in the cold weather. They’re out in droves. One group in particular. Women, young, tipsy. Shameless. Bachelorette party, he gathers, from the matching sashes, the tiara. They’re rowdy, but harmless.

Or at least, he thinks so, before one of them recognises him as "The Hero". He hates it, ignores them. But they want to hear all about it, drunk and laughing and completely oblivious to how uncomfortable they make him feel. One of them asks to see his "sword" and her voice drips with the double entendre, and gushes when it makes him blush beet red. They push and push, even when he gives them nothing. Even when he glares at them, and he's been told more than once that he looks fucking murderous when he has that look in his eye, with the mako and all. He finds himself in a swarm and it makes him feel like he needs a bouncer himself. And then he realises he has one.

Tifa joins them on her side of the bar, and even though 7th Heaven is roaring and demanding, she takes a moment to lean in close on her elbows. His eyes immediately snap to hers, the way she's looking at him makes him feel singled out. He leans in close too, if only to get further away from the gaggle that had him surrounded.

'Hey, big guy. You want a drink? For all your hard work?'

'Please.' _Don't leave me. Please don't leave me._

She pours him a new glass and puts a whiskey on the rocks in front of him in no time at all. She doesn’t leave.

She levers herself up enough to plant a soft, slow kiss wherever she can reach, which happens to be his jaw. Which he clenches, just like his heart, just like every nerve under his skin. And she winks, and it hits him then how much he wants to kiss her, for real.

She doesn't treat her customers that way. And she's never had a bouncer before, they all concede. She might have given them all one of her infamously rare, tempered looks that rivals his own, and finally they back off and she doesn't leave him until they've all retreated, and was certain they wouldn't come back.

She winks at him, before leaving him again for the other end of the bar.

And, he decides, being around Tifa was an odd combination of therapeutic and unbearable.

* * *

'You know what I think? I think you need to get _laid.'_

Yuffie visits, not much. But much too often.

She says it in the heat of the moment, childish, about as childish as the fact that they were currently wrestling over the TV remove. It was his day off, he was gonna damn well watch what he pleased in his own home.

His brain shuts down, reboots barely quick enough to get out, 'Because I won't let you change the channel?’

'Why else would you be such an uptight prick, if not for the fact that yours isn't getting any?'

The situation is quickly deteriorating. He recognizes the way Yuffie manically latches onto a thought or idea. It isn't like much ever stayed in her attention span.

His sex life? Sure. That is a humiliating enough topic to wrap her grubby little brain around.

'I mean I guess it makes _sense._ Nobody wants to screw McBroody-Pants, who lives on the floor in an old stuffy church, do they?'

'Yuffie.'

'Sorry… low blow. Okay, so you've had a lot going on.'

_'Yuffie.'_

'But it's not healthy.'

'Seriously-'

'I'm _being_ serious! You need to… you know… it's not good for the little guy-'

'Stop. _Please.’_

'I'm just trying to look out for you! I mean… you do realise you live above a freaking bar, right? You know girls love an angsty pretty-boy like you. Dumbs girls. Like straight up idiots. They _die_ over a Mister McBrood-Pout-Pout-Pointy-Face.'

Did that make Tifa an idiot? Probably. Misguided, at least.

Yuffie was still talking. 'Seriously, dude. Blue balls is a _serious_ condition that affects thousands of grumpy assholes in Gaia on a yearly-’

'Shut up. Get out of my house.'

Yuffie snorts. 'It's not _your_ house. Tifa would never allow it! _And speaking_ of a certain little hottie barmaid. All joking aside about your blue balls, it’s been like two months since you moved back in and you _still_ very clearly have not done a single thing to make a move.'

She takes advantage of the way his brain finally breaks and steals the remote out of his hand, and for a moment she flicks through the channels, deep in thought, before she settles for a news broadcast describing the miserable winter weather. Something he was probably going to watch, anyway, so he could prepare for the next week of deliveries.

This was all for nothing.

He tries fine-tuning his senses to the television again, but she is a living, breathing ball of horror, and is nowhere near done with this conversation.

'So, what _is_ your excuse? You're clearly stalling. Or you're… shit, Cloud, you can't let Cid win the bet!'

'What _bet?’_

He saw her calculating how she was possibly going to get out of explaining this one, but intrigue always did outweigh the need for secrecy. Maybe she thought this would help her cause. 'I don't know if you should… eh, whatever. We're betting how long it's gonna take for you two to finally get to it. Don't worry, I got your back though. Three months tops, I said. Barret said four. _Vince_ was cruel. He said deathbed. And Cid said you might just be gay and - look, if Cid's right, and you just don't know where all the best gay bars are at, this gal can give you a hand.'

Fuckity fuck. His relationship with Tifa is complicated enough, and he doesn't need a bunch of idiots… _idioting_ things up even more.

He must look as helpless as he feels, because she laughs, vindicated.

'You don't know what you're talking about.' he tries.

'Uh, yes, I do. I am a great ninja, and I see everything! I've seen the way you look at her. And damn it, you’re not as thick as they think you are, right? Honestly, the pair of ya!'

'It’s not funny.'

'You're right, it's not. This is your happiness you're just letting scoot on by. You never struck me as a coward before, Spiky. Clueless, maybe. But you _gotta_ see how bad she has it for you, right? How bad she’s _allwaaays_ had it for you.’

How the _hell_ was he getting a lecture on his love life from _Yuffie?_

Was everyone in AVALANCHE just lining up to take a shot at it?

'It's… not that simple.’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘I can't just - she isn't…'

Each of her words is emphasized with a hard clap. 'This. Isn't. Hard. Cloud. Love is literally the _easiest_ thing there is, you just have to stop holding yourself back!’

‘Like you know anything about it.’

‘I happen to be a genius when it comes to love.’

Cloud scoffs loudly.

‘Okay, I _really_ want to win this bet. Let me help and I’ll cut you in on the winnings. I could go down there with a wink-nudge right now. Let her know all about your _little problem.’_

The most horrible grin fills up her entire face.

 _‘Drop it.’_ he warns.

'There’s no way I'm losing to that crapsack Cid.’ She’s already vaulting over the couch, out of his grasp. He’s tight on her heels. ‘Hey, Tifa! _Tiiifa,_ when are you and Cloud gonna stop wasting my time and get to fu- _let go of my hair!'_

He's never _literally_ thrown her out before. Cross that off the bucket list.

'Ow, ow, ow! Okay, I get it! I overstepped some boundaries!'

'Try _leaping_ and _bounding_ over them.'

He drags her down the stairs. It startles and upsets some of the evening patrons that have just started to arrive, but most knew about the eccentricities that came with the family living above 7th Heaven.

He slams the door on the sight of her scrambling back towards him, and holds it tightly shut.

He comes face to face with Tifa. They both ignore Yuffie's screeching as she pounds on the door.

His stomach tenses at that gaze. She smiles, amused, but is probably a little annoyed by the scene they just made in front of her customers.

'Do me a favor and make her sit out there for at least twenty minutes before you let her back in.'

'Wow. She really got to you, huh?'

He shrugs, for lack of anything he'd ever be willing to say about the conversation he and the brat just shared.

'Don't forget to pack an umbrella for tomorrow.' she says, like a reminder, as she turns on her heel for the bar. 'The weather forecast says it's gonna be a doozy.'

Ears of a night owl, too.

He watches her hips sway.

 _Was he_ really _that obvious?_

* * *

He compliments her latest drawing, another one in a long line of family portraits, holding hands, ridiculous spiky hair. He is even smiling in this one. Marlene holds it to herself proudly, smiles as he praises it, and watches him carry a heavy slab of beer into the bar that he's got a good grip on, until she asks, 'When are you and Tifa gonna have a baby?'

He slams it onto the bench without meaning to, turning on her.

She doesn't see his panic.

'Um. _"When"?'_ he repeats.

'I wanna draw a baby on here.'

'Just… draw one.' he offers helplessly.

'But it's gotta be yours! Daddy said it'll happen some day, but I need to know if they'll have big spiky hair like you, or if they'll be as pretty as Tifa. Or maybe they’ll be spiky _and_ pretty. What do you think?'

'I have to… beer.' He points at the door like an idiot, where Tifa and a whole other palette is waiting. 'Nice drawing, Marlene.'

He tousles her hair for good measure, pretends he isn't screaming on the inside.

_You couldn't bring a kid into this world._

_You can barely take care of yourself._

_Tifa is an amazing mother._

And he wants to talk to her about it, because she’s so intrinsically tied to the expectations their friends and the kids have of them and their future. And sure, she’s a big part of it, taking him by the hands and wading the shores with him, but it’s still so _blurry._ Can’t see the day after the next, still watching his feet, and he’s suddenly been slapped with a future that seems so unattainable it’s almost cruel.

He acts weird for a solid three days before this newfound panic finds its way to her. 

And it’s Friday night, a quiet one, and she’s been mostly standing at the bar going through paperwork, sipping on a drink of her own, glancing at where he is strangely keeping his distance and she knows something is up. The last customers leave, and he closes and locks the door behind them. And he plans to beeline straight for the staircase.

‘Cloud,’ she says, ‘come here.’

He goes to her instead. Utterly disarmed by the way she rests her chin on her palm, elbow to table, and smiles at him, and it’s kind, patient, teasing. _What’s going on in that big brain of yours._

And he admits it, in a rush. Marlene had scared the fuck out of him.

He expects her to laugh at him for letting the innocent, offhand comment from a child freak him out so much. Worse, share his trepidation. Or completely agree. _You’re no father. You couldn’t ever be._

It’s not like he ever really had one.

And he expects her to tell him it’s okay, that he shouldn’t think so much, that Marlene didn’t mean anything by it. And he already knows none of it will make him feel better.

She knows it, too.

And, he figures, they’ve always been better at expressing things without words.

She looks very serious. She sets aside her papers and pen, finishes chewing a piece of ice, and then she kisses him over the bar. And that mile-a-minute pace of his brain stops, practically screeches, like rubber on road.

'Sorry,' she says after.

There's a lingering cold on his mouth.

He stares at hers and he’s thankful that she understands visual queues, that she can see something in his face, and they meet halfway at the entry to behind her bar, and it’s always a give and take. She swings the gate open, and he puts his arms around her.

And he really, really wants her to do it again.

She does. It's just as good. And she doesn’t say a word about what he should think or do. Instead, she says, 'You think I need to talk to Marlene about babies? You know, _"talk"_? Is she too young? Should I leave it for Barret?'

* * *

She opens a floodgate with that mouth.

He watches a man flirt with her, a little too forward. Cloud stands a little straighter. But she politely turns him down without any further incident. When she walks away from their table, Cloud hears him say that she's a goddess, with great tits, but she's stingy. A prude. And because she hadn’t settled for _his_ particular advances, he calls her a waste.

Tifa has given him pretty strict rules about who to kick and not kick out of her bar, and kicking somebody out just for running their mouth, quietly to their buddies no less, is not warranted. But it's hard to sit there and listen to people talk about her like that.

The prude bit… that might have been true. She’s flirty, and she teases him, but their courtship had always been restrained to the point where you could blink, miss it, miss the undertones.

And then he saw her at three in the morning, leaving her bedroom in her underwear.

And nothing else. Absolutely nothing else.

What an image that had been. Her hair was getting long again, tossed messily over her shoulder and squinting into the hall, half asleep. Hands on her breasts that wanted to spill out everywhere, hipbone and trim waist, all tone and muscle.

No doubt she is still getting used to not being the only one up this late. Early. And he imagines she’s only just now getting ready for bed. Night owl. His delivery schedule is inconsistent at best, and he tells himself this breach of privacy was bound to happen.

But she doesn’t do much other than look a little less annoyed by the ungodly hour, and motion for the bathroom without exposing too much more of herself. Maybe she is too out of it to be embarrassed, but he can't see a trace of it on her. What would that asshole say now.

'You, uh… you wanna go first?' she asks, croaky from sleep, palms barely covering her nipples.

 _Wanna go together?_ Down, Strife.

He says no, to be polite. But mostly because he is now getting hard and needs to hide that fact. And even more so because he wants to see her ass framed in a halo of bathroom light before she shuts the door on him.

Not a prude. Modest. Probably knew she was gorgeous and was unashamed of that fact in her own home.

And it was like an awakening, as ridiculous as it sounded. A side of him that had been dormant by necessity now going into overdrive.

He can't blame Yuffie, even though he certainly hadn't needed it spelled out to him that everyone and their damn dog could see the way he is still grovelling after her, and that it isn't just a side-effect of not being laid for a few _centuries_ (as she had recently put it, desperate to win the bet still). It went beyond the natural inevitability of sharing a duty to two beautiful kids, a house and businesses. The intimacy and that quiet companionship that they’d always had, and sometimes needed work to find. He’s ruined it before. No doubt he'd end up hurting her again, and he wonders if he already is for the way they don't really talk about what they _are,_ and as nice as it is- the lack of expectations, this careful exploration - they can't keep doing this. She deserves better.

He tries to touch the mattress under him, pretending that the feel of it is still otherworldly. But it isn't. It is his norm now. It is his empty, nightly routine.

Sometimes he doesn’t need alcohol to sleep. Sometimes he thinks of her icy mouth and her naked body.

Hyper-aware of an outside breeze curling along his eyelids, his bare chest, as he starts touching himself, hoping that it eases some of the tension, always forgetting that it just creates more and more.

He's trained on his name leaving her mouth. He likes it in all variations. Even when it's a sharp thing, reminding him that he’s left his dirty boots on the bathroom floor again. When he says something particularly, unbearably corny. Sometimes it wraps around her tongue, sounds soft and she uses it and singles him out and it reminds him that he’s in the room, _here._

Really, it was just a _name,_ and it was _his._ He never liked it. But she says it like she loves it.

And now when he's lying there jerking off he keeps thinking about being with her, he thinks about touching her, hearing her cry it out.

It's nice in theory, but the truth is he'd want her so out of her mind that words were lost on her. He knows that she's quiet in the moment, anyway. Audible gasps and whimpers, remembering her pleases and thank yous to a fault. She holds on tight. And she likes a bit of control. He wouldn't mind that, her being on top, back bowed and crown of her head reaching for the roof.

But no matter what, he's got that moment beneath the Highwind to call back on. It's one of those things they hardly spoke about, and probably needed to. Always there between them. But being with her then feels like a lifetime ago. It was one of the first moments he had felt like a human again. Their shy intimacy and about a thousand feelings they couldn't express through words. She tried, though, with her kisses and her body, all pressed so close as they chose their last moments with each other. Pandemonium wasn't a powerful aphrodisiac, but he had forgotten himself in her. Fully-clothed and fumbling and trying to bury themselves in one another.

And remembering is bliss, and then emptiness, and then a mess he is never prepared for.

And Tifa sleeping down the hall, wearing nothing but that black little number.

* * *

‘I think I can get away with having the bar closed. Hopefully the locals won’t be too upset.’

‘Mm.’

‘Will you help me set up the beds tonight?'

‘I will.’

‘It’ll be nice to have everyone in the house again, don’t you think?’

Cloud nods, distracted.

'Cloud... you know, you can kiss me whenever you want.'

He's not prepared for that. They are just in the kitchen. She is getting the pint glasses clean and ready for the night. She talks about having Avalanche under one roof again, and he's looking over a contract for an upcoming delivery he's going to have to leave extra early for in the morning if he wants to make it back in time for dinner with their friends.

They haven't really spoken about it, the dos and don'ts. He's been terrified of them. He's instantly terrified now.

'I know.' He doesn't, but he knows anything else he says will hurt her. He knows that she wants him to show initiative. She knows that she's had to take the reins for a while now, and she loves how gentle they are, but she's human. Maybe she feels like she's gone easy on him for long enough. Doesn't know he's walking on a precipice.

Because on the surface, it is tender moments when nobody is looking. She always kisses first. He always lets her.

Under, it's strained. Her easy kisses make him realize more and more how uncomfortable he is in his own skin.

And he knows the difference between his hang ups around intimacy and the fact that his fucking head is a ticking time bomb. Truth be told, Tifa's been on his mind an embarrassing amount lately. Can’t stop thinking about being with her, he knows if he tries hard enough, he _could,_ but opportunities come and go in an instant and he’s often left lamenting that perfect moment just as they say goodnight. _I could have kissed her first. I could have asked her to stay with me. I could have asked to be with her._

He’s so scared to instigate it and the more he stews in it the bigger, badder it gets.

_She's so gentle and touchy because she's worried you're gonna run off again._

_You're scared because you think you probably will._

_Maybe you'll wake up tomorrow and find out you have another rare, fatal disease._

She lifts a hand to nudge the hair out of his eyes, caught in his lashes, snaps him back to the here and now like bad whiplash, like she knows he had just been retreating inside himself, and usually that would be enough of a sign for her to back off. But her fingers linger on his cheek. He grips the lip of the bar tight as the physicality of her overwhelms him. He's seen her hit somebody in the face so hard before that she split her knuckles, but he's as mystified by how precise and delicate her hands can be as much as the strength behind them. She keeps them clean and manicured, but he feels the callouses on her fingertips that came with her years of training, their journey across Gaia, the bar work.

She is constantly breaching the gap between them with these hands. Smaller intimacies. Offering massages, because riding wasn't always great on the neck and shoulders. She takes comfort in it, because for some reason he's something she can rely on, to ground her, and that should make it easier.

But he still can't just reach out and _touch_ her. He’s hesitant. He feels ready, until the moment he’s in front of her, just wishing he could put his hands on her, feeling like he can’t. Maybe he’s scared it’ll all go wrong.

No doubt she would end up hurting him.

_You're a fucking asshole, Strife._

She probably deserves to hurt him back a little.

Maybe a lot.

'Tifa,' it comes out soft, under his breath, and he's not really sure what he wants to say, maybe she reads it wrong or reads it right, maybe she _does_ understand that he's on a precipice.

It's almost too bold of her. She takes a hold of his wrists, tugs him out of his seat until he’s _right there,_ and slowly drags his hands across her, like she knew he was constantly, pitifully terrified and desperate to touch her.

He is so awkward at first, timing all off. But she urges him on. Suddenly she gasps softly into his mouth, as he was palming her stomach.

Then it's like something snaps. His heart is racing and it hurts in his chest. He feels completely out of her depth, her requirements… and yet she is reacting so positively to how desperate his tongue is, suddenly inside her mouth, and how hard he grabs handfuls of her ass.

She first yanks at his hair and then urges him to do something. Anything. Going onto the tips of her toes to grind herself up against him.

She makes soft noises that go in and out of breathless, and high-pitched as he thrusts a thigh between hers and tries to give her what she wants.

'I want to fuck you,' he gasps, and the admittance makes him want to cry.

Her response is to pull him towards the bar and climb up onto it, with his belated assistance. It's almost familiar, the desperation.

Then, she is begging for it. Hands frantic, shoving clothes aside. Legs locked and high on his waist.

He suddenly realizes that his heart is racing because this is a full-blown panic attack.

It's a blur. They're on the floor. Clothes askew. Her eyes are wide and wet, from the shock and the concern, but being strong for him, hand over his heart.

They've been here before. The times in between. When he was a man one moment and an empty shell the next. When he's Zack, and then himself, and then nobody. She'd climbed into his brain and pulled him back out, and after she'd been there to hold his hand through the panic. She knows how to do this.

'Breathe, Cloud. Breathe. Here, hold my hand.'

He squeezes her. So hard to focus. He tries to steady his breath by breathing through his nose but it comes out in time to a shudder and hurts.

'Hey, hey... tell me three things you feel.'

'...Your hand. My-my heart.' Feeling like it was bursting. 'My… clothes.' Itching his skin.

'That’s good. Now tell me three things you see,' she asks of him, softly.

'You.' His heart breaks. 'You're crying.'

'Shh. What else?'

She talks him down, keeps asking him questions, until he deep dives back into himself, slowly sinking into reality, taking long breaths at her instructions.

Then he's so tired he could drop dead.

'I'm so sorry,' she chokes. 'Are you okay?'

He knows it only takes a word. The truth. She would understand.

But he can't help but think that she would be heartbroken. That every careful step she's been taking with him was worth nothing.

He accepts her help off the floor, lets her hug him tight to her for a moment, and he's still weak from it, blood pounding, arms hanging at his side. And when she realises he's not reciprocating she makes an arm's-length of distance between them, hand still pressed to his heart. She doesn't protest when he grips it tight in his and gives her a pathetic little "sorry" under his breath and makes for the door to the garage.

Leaving her there is a blur.

And even though he doesn't trust his uneasy hands, he just wants to jump on his bike and ride until the wind sweeps some sense into him. No doubt Tifa would freak out if his first response was to hightail it on his bike anyway, so instead he sits in there and holds his head and doesn't notice as the hours slip by.

He wonders why is had been so easy last time. She'd reached out for him then, under the Highwind, and he'd barely been half a person then, and maybe he'd been awkward and stilted but he'd - he'd still been able to _reciprocate,_ give and take. He hadn't thought of anything but the comfort of it, greedy for the pleasure of it, but maybe that was because the end of the world was on the horizon and he'd just been like everyone else, holding onto what they could while it was still there to hold onto.

He's still living in the past, he knows it. Trying to assimilate himself back into this perfect, fragile life wasn't - coming together. Like it should. Like it would, if he was anybody else. For a long time his thoughts had not been his own. Like broken glass, and he's spent so long trying to fill the gaps and find something clear, something that looked back at him that he could actually recognize. But now all it was, was slippery. No doubt if he starts holding on tight again, it would start to splinter. What if he did this every time? What if all she could associate with their intimacy from now on was his panic, and never being able to get anywhere? What if he couldn't satisfy her ever?

Tifa gives him his space, and when he comes out of hiding he recognises the clear cut path she gives him to his room, and she doesn't come knocking.

He doesn’t sleep, and the night stretches on. When the early signs of sunrise finally hit his window he gets out of bed and he realises he should have been out on the road an hour ago, it feels like a hangover. Mouth dry like it was stuffed with cotton, head pounding. He misses the kids, hears them stirring. Tifa's door is closed.

The day drags. By the time he’s walking back through the door he's sick to his stomach and running on no sleep and a fifteen hour ride. The others have already arrived and are knee-deep in a party fever. He barely registers Marlene as she greets him at the door, telling him Barret is running late. There's music and Tifa's good food and crates of alcohol and familiarity. He stands in an archway, nodding as they all greet him, deafening. Of course, he's already trying to pinpoint her. Tifa's at the bar, alone, and the seconds before the room erupts and singles him out, he sees that she's resting against the tabletop with her head in her hands and nobody notices at all. She's all alone.

She looks like she hasn’t slept, either. When they lock eyes she starts humming with tension.

He heads straight to her on instinct with a clarity he hasn't felt all day- he's hurt her, he needs to make it better.

And the air is heavy between them, as they both deliberate their words.

'How'd the delivery go?' she asks, even though it's not what she wants to say.

'Fine.' Fucking stressful. He'd nearly fallen asleep on his bike twice, had woken up to the beginnings of his wheels spinning out.

And he has so many apologies on the tip of his tongue for leaving her there and avoiding her, but again she beats him to it.

‘I’m sorry about last night.’ she says, quiet so that the others don’t hear.

 _She_ was sorry.

'Tifa,' he sighs, rubbing his eyes, exhaustion in his bones. He doesn't know what else to say to her. He's a coward, and he hides his truth, even though he’d been thinking the entire day about what he wants to say to her. He keeps feeling that panic, tightness in his chest, reliving it.

'I didn't mean to... I pushed you too hard, it's my fault-' and she's apologizing again. So meek, reaching out for him. He pulls his hand away just before she can make contact, because he can’t handle this backwards world where he deserves her comfort while she blames herself for all his shortcomings.

'Don't do that.'

'What?'

'It's not your fault I'm-'

 _'Cloud,'_ she stops him short, before the rest of it hits his tongue- psychotic, broken, empty. Her brows pinch hard over an onset of tears, and she fights them. He would like to think it’s not pity, but it still stings like it to see her cry for him like this. 'You had a panic attack, you can't blame yourself. I understand, things aren’t going as smoothly as you hoped, but-'

'Don't you ever think for a second that you're wasting your time?'

She looks hurt, confused. 'No,' she promises, 'not for even _one._ Just talk to me. I promise I'll understand.'

Cloud rubs his eyes hard with the heel of his hand again, overwhelmed, she breaks it down like it's easy, like he hasn't been living in his head for months, questioning everything. Questioning reality. He tries. 'Maybe I'm not supposed to have… _this.'_

'What do you mean?'

And it's been months now, but the time between the second end of the world and the moment in which he sits at this bar before her is still insurmountable, and still hours old, and he doesn't think he can leave limbo and move on like the others can, and kiss the girl he loves and touch her and be with her and have a family, because things aren't that simple and they never have been. Tifa deserves better. So much better.

'Forget it,' he says, instead, like a coward.

'I'm- no, _Cloud._ We need to talk, please talk to me. I was so worried for you, I-'

'I don't have anything else to say,' he says, too harsh. It makes her shoulders snap straight.

He feels himself shutting down. She looks hurt by his dismissal. And maybe he needs that fire from her to knock some sense into him again, except _she’s_ the sorry one. He can see the guilt in her face, she’s meek and reluctant. And eventually, when she realises he can’t give her what she needs now, either, she deflates.

She doesn’t push him again.

He sees her wipe a tear away, just before the room behind them erupts with cheers, and Barret walks through the door.

He uses it as an excuse to leave this conversation. Tries to take a deep breath and the fact hits home that they’ll all be staying here for a week or longer. And tries to act normal. He tries to pretend Tifa isn't looking straight through him. He tries to pretend he's anywhere but _here_ as he sits through Cid mocking the everloving shit out of him, and the kids and the way they never seem to slow down. They don't seem to notice how awkward the charge is in the room.

And then, Yuffie. She slips into his path, completely oblivious to his mood. Sleep deprivation and a healthy (debatably) helping of whiskey. At this point he's seeing stars flickering in his peripherals, feels himself sinking into the floorboards.

'So how's the mission going?'

'Mission.' he repeats.

'Mission “Profess Undying Love To Tifa Before I Go Grey”.'

'Not in the mood.'

'With side project “Get Into Tifa's Pants Before My Grave”. Nicknamed “Tifa _unLockherHart”._ Get it. What, no luck? Nothing steamy to report?'

'Stay out of my business.'

 _‘Yikes._ Someone's grumpy. How much have you had to drink? You smell like a bar. And not Tifa's nice bar. A gross sticky one. What's wrong with you, Tifa can't keep her eyes off you, like you're about to spontaneously combust.'

He winces. 'Go away.'

She stops him with an entire arm as he tries to swoop around her. This invasion of personal space makes him feel like a ticking time bomb.

'You really are a jerk today, aren't you.' He can hear it in her voice, and see it in her face. She's concerned. He doesn't want it. 'Shit, did you strike out?'

'Yuffie.' A muscle in his jaw jumps for how hard he's clenching it.

'Oh, Spiky. It's okay! We all have bad days-'

'Yuffie,' he snarls, and it makes her jump. 'Fuck. Off.'

The bar behind them goes dead silent. He says it much louder than intended.

She stole his materia. He could handle that. She drove him up the walls, but even on a bad day he’s never felt anything but toleration and affection for Yuffie. Like the sister he definitely never wanted.

He never thought he had it in himself to be cruel to her.

'That was rude,' she says, clearly hurt and trying to play it off, not so full of herself anymore. 'I'm just trying to _help_ you.'

‘You're a pain in my ass.'

'Maybe that’s just the stick shoved up there.'

'You should fucking grow up and stay out of people's lives.'

'Fuck you, Spiky.'

 _‘Hey,_ hey, how about we cut that out in front of the kids, yeah?'

He's shocked more than one person in the room. Including himself.

Yuffie stares at him like she has just been slapped, before storming out.

Tifa looks at him, and it makes it hard to swallow, before she follows after Yuffie.

Mild, initial distaste from his friends hurt, but not as much as the look Denzel and Marlene give him. Wondering if they should be scared of him. If they should expect to be spoken to like that.

Barret nearly buries him under the floorboards.

'You better go apologize to the brat before I knock your teeth out. Don't ever do that in front of my kid, Spiky. Not ever.'

He will, but not because he is scared of Barret's big metal fist.

_The look on her face._

He almost wants to blame her. He feels like she’s made him complacent, brought his guard down, made it easier to succumb to his doubt.

_Bullshit._

Tifa did nothing but try and build him up. She wasn't that little voice in his head that screamed _unworthy_ as soon as he stepped into 7th Heaven.

He spends the rest of the evening in his room, trying to clear his head. When it's time to put the kids to bed, he's already had a shower and washed the stink of booze off, and he slaps some sense into himself and he meets them there, tucks their sheets around them. Usually there's some easy banter, sometimes it takes forever to get them to stop talking. They're silent, watching him.

When he moves for Denzel's bed, the young boy grabs his hand.

'Are you okay?' he asks.

Marlene sits up a little.

He swallows thickly, trying to figure out if he should tell the truth. 'I'm sorry. Sorry if I scared you.'

'Why'd you fight with Yuffie?'

'You don't have to worry about that.' he says, as kindly as he can. He squeezes Denzel's hand and let's go.

'She was really upset.'

'You too, Cloud. Are... you okay?' Marlene asks softly.

Denzel bites his lip and Marlene gives him a look. This territory isn't for them. This is adult stuff.

He doesn't really feel like an adult.

He doesn't want to lie. He hates the look in their eyes. 'I'm okay. I'll see you tomorrow.' he promises, and says goodnight. He leaves as quick as he can, hides in his room. He hears Tifa go in after him.

In a panic, he thinks he’s no good. He's got them all on edge, like they're waiting for him to hurt them.

Leaps backwards, after the tiny steps he’s been taking with them all, Tifa and Denzel and Marlene.

He thinks about leaving.

Starts writing a note for it. Drinks too much.

Passes out instead, paper stuck to his face.

* * *

He wakes to her saying his name. He lifts his head up from his arm, partially stuck, and imprinted with red and drool.

She stands there twisting her fingers together, and stares at the empty bottle next to him.

He looks over to it and sees that it is on its side, and balancing drastically over the edge of his desk. He sets it straight, and stretches back into the chair.

He squints at her.

She looks tired.

'I saw your light was on.' she says softly.

He doesn't know what to say, so he just stares at her.

Her face perfects calm as she came towards him, offering a hand. 'Let me help you get to bed?'

'I'm fine.'

She moves back respectfully as he climbs out of his chair, half asleep, in the dregs of a bender. The room seems to condense one moment and then expand the next.

Tifa bites her lip. 'You sure you don't need help?'

He closes his eyes briefly, imagining a world without Tifa, hating it instantly. He’s hurt her, maybe even scared her. Still, she comes to him. And he wonders what it will take, what her boundaries are, what he has to do to make her realise he’s no good.

She reaches to pick up the empty bottle on his desk. 'You finish a bottle like this most nights?'

'It helps with the nightmares.'

'You're having nightmares?' she echoes, sounding heartbroken. 'Me too. All the time. Why don't you talk to me about them.'

'Because it’s not your job, Tifa. You don't need to hear them. You're not my shrink.'

'Do you need a shrink?' she asks very seriously.

He laughs. A mean sound. 'Probably.'

She puts the bottle back down, edges back.

'I know it's not my job.' she says, so softly, like anything louder and she would choke on it. 'But I want to. I'm sorry that you can't talk to me. But together we can find someone or some _thing_ that can help. Just let me.'

'I thought about leaving.' It slips out.

She makes an audible gasp, and a hand flies to her mouth. He gives her a few moments as her shoulders tremble and she tries desperately not to overreact.

'Do you think that would help?' she practically squeaks.

'I don't know.'

'Where would you go? Back to the church?'

_‘I don't know.’_

'Is it me?' she asks weakly, unable to help herself, in a voice that made his heart hurt. She tugs on her arm like a scolded child. 'I… I know I’m pushing you too hard. I didn't- yesterday, I didn't mean to- I'm sor-'

‘Stop. Stop apologising. It’s not you.’

She stares, waiting for him to explain.

What was worse than the thought of giving her excuses was that he had none. He didn't. And worse still was turning away from all this having her believe she was the reason, when it was just his broken brain. His stupid fucking brain, that thought that leaving could possibly be the easiest solution to this.

'Just go to bed,' he says, tired.

'I can't.'

'Tifa-'

'I _can't go to sleep_ not knowing if you're still gonna be here when I wake up!'

'You would be better for it.'

'I wouldn't be,' she says defiantly.

When he reaches for her, she lets him. Until she realizes it's just to urge her out of his room, and he pleads with her, with eyes only, to let it be. Just let him be.

She struggles so much he has to dodge a misplaced elbow, and he has to take a big step back.

They stare at each other for too long, and he feels sick, sick to his stomach to see her like this. He can only imagine what it is she saw.

He swallows so hard. And he wonders what parts of herself she fills by collecting and loving broken things, taking care of everyone else, and their problems. 'There has to be. Has to be something wrong with you.'

And it’s the wrong thing to say.

'Something wrong with me?' she demands, her voice getting wet and suffocated, and angry. 'You think there's something _wrong_ with me? For hoping we could be a family? There's something _wrong_ with me for that? I _told_ you, I don’t want you to be something you’re not!’

'I don’t even fucking know who I _am_ sometimes, Tifa.’ He’s close to yelling, feels it well up in his chest until it hurts.

‘I don't expect everything to be perfect and happy all the time, I just-' she starts crying through it. Starts clenching and unclenching her fists. 'Don’t you know that I _love_ you?’

She grabs the shirt off his chest and in a motion crushes him to her. She sobs, but the material dulls it. And it vibrates through him.

And he just…

'You love everyone,' he tries to tell himself, more than her.

She shakes her head furiously at that. _‘No._ No. Not like I love you.'

‘You’re gonna keep getting hurt.' he whispers into her hair, trying desperately to get her to understand. He is not okay. He has a lifetime ahead of him to rebuild his life, his head. It means nothing but pain for her.

'The only thing that hurts is you thinking you're not worthy of this family. When it's the- it's the _other way around,_ don't you see? Don't you see what you've done for us? And the kids _idolize you._ And I… I just want to be with you. You're my best friend.'

'What if I can't… satisfy you.'

She nearly laughs, and it turns into a mild sob. 'Cloud, your mental health is so much more important.’

He brings his thumbs to her cheeks, wiping the tears from her under eyes, and settles either side to cradle her face.

They both stand in the shock of it. The easy way he touches her.

He watches her thick lashes flutter closed over her eyes. Cloud brushes away the mess of hair that is sticking to her cheek, tucking it behind the curve of her ear.

'I'm terrified,' he admits. He thumbs the corner of her mouth, to quell her flicker of worry. He's not so scared of this, now that it's been thrust upon him. He suddenly can't handle the thought of not touching her. Of tears on her face that he can't wipe away.

Tifa releases her breath. 'What of?'

'This family means too much.' he forces out, through the lump in his throat. 'This happiness. To me it just seems like… us loving each other, and me being the way that I am. It just won't ever work.'

'The way you are,' she echoes, and looks thoughtful. 'I remember my dad said once, sometimes one person can't be their best selves in a relationship, and that it’s okay. It's okay to share the load. It's okay for one of you to hurt.' She is crying again. He is about to, too. 'I… I don't want perfect. I don't expect you to feel like you can handle this all the time.'

'I feel like I don't deserve forgiveness.' And there it is. So much fucking guilt, stacked up, so heavy, constant and aching behind his eyes as he sees Aerith die and he sees himself leaving Tifa and the kids to let _himself_ die, and he sees his mother burning and Zack dying for him and-

She abruptly puts her hands on his face, and pulls his brow down to hers, and the spiral catches, snags. 'I can't - _nobody_ can - ever make you believe that there is nothing to forgive. For Aerith. For leaving. For all of it. But... do you forgive me?'

The question is sudden, as is his confusion, quells some of that panic. 'You never did…'

'I lied to you, remember?' she insists. 'When we met in Midgar, I lied about who you were, because I was scared. And I was so _jealous_ of Aerith, even up until the moment she died, of how easily she gave her love to people. To you. I've always hated myself for that, for feeling that way even after she was gone. And instead of trying harder I just let you leave again.'

They hold each other for a long moment. Her words sober him. Make him feel like he was seeing things clearly for the first time in a long time.

'I'm sorry,' he says, and he realises that it’s the first time he’s actually asked for it.

'It's okay,' she hushes him.

'I'm so sorry.' his voice breaks.

She hushes him again, and kisses his cheeks and eyelids until there is no evidence of tears.

* * *

She would have given him months, years, to slowly fill the gaps between them.

He gives her a week. By then his head is clear. By then he has apologised to Yuffie. By then he has assured the kids that he’s okay. That he’s _going_ to be okay.

By then he’s back to thinking about her, this time it’s about how good she looks in the shirt she's started wearing to bed. Coincidentally, it looks familiar. Like the one he'd lost after a wash recently.

He’s still walking on a precipice, but by the next time he gets her alone, he feels like he wants to take a running leap.

She has a place in his room now after that night. Until then she has kept her distance, given him his space, his privacy.

He catches her after a shower. Sticks his head into the hall and calls her name softly. He’s not sure what drives it, this need to have her in his space, to catch a quiet moment.

He misses their late night conversations.

He swallows hard, his doubts and fears and the lingering feeling that this is fake, that Tifa is fake and she couldn’t possibly want and need him, except for the fact that she’s locked the door behind her. Smiles at him.

They have to be quiet, because the house is full again and there are multiple sleeping bodies around them and he’s pretty sure Yuffie’s passed out right above them in the attic.

After a loud, concise snore that proves to be true.

‘At least she’s not upset anymore. You know she… she got in my head, about us.’

Fucking Yuffie.

'She kept hounding me to make a move.'

'She wanted to win a bet.'

Her brow creases, confusion, amusement, an interrogation on the horizon and he almost feels sorry for Yuffie, when she next gets get hands on her. ‘What bet?’

‘It’s not important. She’s a little shit.’

'She told me that you thought I didn't want you, but I've wanted this… I don't know. Always. I guess I thought I was doing the right thing, so you didn’t feel like you had to.’

'I'm… I've never been good at this.'

'I know. You've always been so clueless about my feelings.'

'Just not myself.' he corrects her. For all the years of sexual tension and a history that weaved in and out of one another, for most of it he’s been working out the kinks, regaining his life back, didn’t have time to really dwell on whether or not the beautiful girl he used to know may or may not have feelings for him, and whether or not those shy, secret looks she always gave him meant anything good, or if she just thought he was crazy.

He turns her face up to press his lips on hers, grabbing fistfuls of her hair as he does. And then he twists his shirt up off her body to expose skin, finds nothing but that little black number.

She's shaking so much. It feels different.

And it's easier to put his hands on her the next time he does it. She instantly turns to gooseflesh and holds him tighter.

Says, sweetly, 'We don't have to.' Because it hasn’t been that long since they’d come to that agreement, that understanding.

He doesn't have to. He just has to want to. And he really fucking wants to.

Then they're right where they left off.

Maybe he has always wanted it to be slow. They've had enough of a fucking build up for it to be the most luxurious time-consuming consummation of his life. It wouldn't have been on his desk. He probably would have made her come with his fingers, a few times more with his mouth. He has imagined soft places, her bed and her scent everywhere, more of those candles and private light.

But she's wriggling, arching. And he's leading, or trying to. Trying to remind himself it's okay. To go fast and take. Because as much as he would love to take his time, he's already yanking the shirt off his back and shoving their underwear away.

And it is almost too sudden for him to be inside her, glorious and inch by inch as her mouth falls open. He's always had this image of her. She was an old memory, distant and fading at times. He can't remember if she ever trembled this much, but he remembers her mouth on his neck, he remembers how hot, and how deep each breath felt in her chest.

Startlingly clear and real, and he likes these new memories already.

'Is this too much,' he asks, without meaning to. The doubt again, rearing up. 'Is this going too fast? I-' he lost his words in a long, languid moan as she put a hand gently over his mouth and gave a roll of her hips that made him want to weep. A whole feeling, from her belly to her hipbone to the way her legs and her pussy clench down on him.

Properly shushed.

Shape and angles. Spectrum of colour. His pace picks up, turns shallow and hard and the back of the desk starts edging forward and slamming back into the wall. They both flinch at that, suddenly remembering the kids and their guests definitely didn't need to be hearing this.

So she hops into his arms even before he starts hoisting her higher, somehow finding the bed.

It was nail on skin, teeth on her mouth, and his. She made _“oh”_ noises on a varying scale of bliss, and the tighter she holds him the closer he knows she is. He's remembering her tells, learning a few more. _It comes with fighting with her._

She _came_ fighting. Right on the edge, she suddenly slams her palm against his shoulder without meaning to, startling him. He sees her instantly regret and let go of her pleasure, but it's done the opposite to him. He is suddenly so eager to watch that he bows back and plants a knee on the edge of his bed, and starts fucking her hard to make the feeling go on and on, and he watches her come apart. Come with her body arched beautifully back over his sheets, like something carved out of marble. But also so real as her chest heaves and glows with sweat and a nipple peeks through the long dip in his shirt. A convulsion around him that makes his eyes roll back into his head, ringing with the sounds she made.

He's proud of himself for even holding on this long.

He rides out, buried to the point of their hips clashing, what he considers to be one of the best orgasms he's ever had in his life, and then crashes into her arms as she pulls him close and lets him shake against her.

He can't do anything for minutes after, trying to suck oxygen back into his lungs, a thousand miles away in some otherworldly plain of existence.

When he can, he dares to venture a look into her eyes.

She looks a little nervous.

'Tifa,' he tries, voice hoarse. He licks his lips. 'I don't think people tell you enough that you're amazing.'

Her face and throat go completely red. 'I'm not.'

'You are.'

'I'm really not,' she laughs, as he leaves a descent of kisses along her neck and chest, down the deep neckline in his shirt. Which he loves on her, maybe a little too much.

This affection came easily. An appraisal of her body he's always wanted to give.

He smiles at her. 'You have to be as dense as me not to see that.'

'Well, and you _are_ pretty dense.'

* * *

'They were definitely fucking.'

'I definitely don't care.'

'I mean I heard the desk slamming and everything. That _definitely_ means- right? Do you know how much money I have riding- _snerk-_ on this? I've got two days before you smug bastards come to collect. I need to know. Can I borrow your phone?'

'It's really none of-'

_'Strife Delivery Service, you name it we-'_

'Heyyy. Hey, Cloud, it's me. Yuffie. Are you busy?'

_'Yes.'_

'Great, great. Hey um, I just want to ask…' A long suffering sigh. 'I just wanted to talk about what happened. You know I only had your best interest at heart, right? Really, the bet meant nothing. But, _speaking_ of the bet-'

_'Just shut up for one second… I want to apologize.'_

'Well that's a great way to start an apology. Also, you already did that, remember? And because I am a gracious person, I _accepted.'_

_'Great. I'm not talking about yelling at you. You were right.'_

'Say what now? Hold on a second. Vincent! I'm putting this on speaker. Can you record it? Okay. Can you say that again. Particularly the part where I'm right and you're wrong?'

_'...Idiot.'_

'Wait, so does that mean you and Teef…'

_'...’_

'...'

_'...'_

‘You _know…'_

He sighed. _'We're… together now.'_

‘Oh! That's great. Mission accomplished, huh? Well. Good. I'm glad. That makes me happy.'

_'Guess that means you won the bet.'_

'Hey, you're right, would you look at that!'

Beside her, Vincent rolls his eyes.

'Just under three months right? I won! So you came through for me. Does this mean you guys are gonna start pumping out babies? I am _not_ babysitting. Maybe I'll start another bet with the guys for how long it'll take you two to knock one out, if you know what I mean. Three months, yeah?'

_Click._

  
  



End file.
